godthedog

currently reading 'at swim, two boys' by jamie o'neill. it's taking me forever, mostly because it's not very compelling. lots of patchy james joyce imitating (in particular, a few jarring pages that blatantly rip off the "ithaca" chapter of 'ulysses' for no apparent reason), with characters who are mostly pretty thin. before that, i read faulkner's 'intruder in the dust', which was also not very compelling. the more i read faulkner, the more he seems like a hit-or-miss guy rather than the uber-genius i'm told he was.

now with more crown!

amazing, amazing movie that's totally engrossing and gets a perfect balance between the jokes and the story. there's no big comic set pieces (like the chest-waxing scene in '40-year-old virgin'), just a lot of good asides and funny situations while the story keeps going, so it doesn't lose its momentum when the story has to take over in the final act like in most comedies. just well-crafted, smart storytelling. and judd apatow can write some great dialogue, especially male-female arguments.

suns to name steve kerr as their new gm/president: http://sports.espn.go.com/nba/news/story?id=2888923 i have no clue if this is supposed to be a good thing or a bad thing for them.

dumb and boring. by this point, they'd forgotten completely what made POTC unique and turned it into just another summer action movie. the comic relief in particular was pretty awful, and the story had so many betrayals and twists that it lost any semblance of people trying to outsmart each other and came off as just another gimmick.

that was "working class hero", one of john lennon's best songs, which makes it by default one of the best songs ever written. it's an awesomely angry and chilling song if you're sitting down, actively listening to it, and paying attention to the lyrics. the problem was the context. i don't know who thought it was a good idea to try to fit six repetitive verses on the government fucking you in the middle of a night full of songs that are basically required to change key every 30 seconds. total buzzkill. i don't know if it was a tired voice or the cumulative effects of time, but kelly had a bit of a bonnie tyler "throat on sandpaper" thing going on with the vocals last night, which was sexy.

bjork's 'medulla'. ba-dum, CHING.

you've surely heard "photograph" and "peaceful easy feeling" before. that's like going through life without seeing a michael jordan jersey.

that ryan hire makes no sense at all. why would they choose someone to be a corporate manager who hasn't even made a sale in the job he's had for almost a year? the pam/jim moment right before the credits is the most perfect thing they've ever done. i will totally admit that my eyes welled up, and i haven't done that with a tv show since the final episode of 'the wonder years', and that was when i was eleven. that should've been the end of the series, i don't see how they're ever going to top that. i thought overall the episode was pretty indicative of the third season in general: really funny, but sort of pandering in a soap-opera way and way too much going on at once.

so who's going to play backup point guard for nash? barbosa?

i think by the end of this series nash will have taken four years off his life. his sheer force of will is just amazing to watch. my earlier thought about stopping phoenix at the 3 has been totally negated in both wins, and i'm starting to think they might actually have what it takes to beat the spurs. if i'm san antonio and amare does make it to game 5, i would start to be scared, because phoenix has shown that they can beat san antonio in ways they're not supposed to get beaten. i think the stats showed that game 2 was their second-worst blowout of their entire season, and that they've only lost like 2 games when leading into the fourth quarter by that much.

'godfather II' does have quite a bit of filler to it, but i think michael's story is far more compelling than young vito. young vito has no interesting supporting cast at all (apart from the local don he kills), his scenes feel pretty rote and not dynamic or interesting; michael is surrounded by some of the most finely-developed characters ever, especially fredo and tom hagan. still a great movie.

let me know how that manilow album is.

bjork - 'volta' i've listened to it a few times on & off since yesterday, and it's far too weird for me to be able to tell if it's any good yet. first impressions are that it seems like a less successful version of 'medulla', where the material takes a backseat to experiments with sounds & structures. 'medulla' didn't have fantasically compelling songs, but i think it succeeded wildly as a formal experiment. with this, it seems unclear what the experiment is supposed to be, and the effect is just "oh...okay..."

i was reading this psychological study in this academic journal called 'music perception', where they were looking at intense emotional reactions in listeners, and i saw this table of the music pieces they used for their experiment: "Tuba Mirum": Requiem KV 626, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart -- An example of classical vocal music in which all solo voices from bass to soprano as well as a choir enter sequentially without any overlap, enabling study of the effect of different voice registers. "Toccata BWV 540": Johann Sebastian Back -- An example of instrumental classical music (organ) in which different themes are repeated and developed in a highly ordered manner, enabling study of the effect of repeated parts compared to their first appearance. "Making Love out of Nothing": Air Supply -- An example of pop music previously shown to elicit strong emotional reactions (Panksepp, 1995). and a little further down the list, i see: "Skull Full of Maggots": Cannibal Corpse -- An example of "death metal" music. Even if the piece seems to be nothing but chaotic shouting and crying at first glance, it has a clear and simple structure. so, bravo to air supply and cannibal corpse for their valuable contributions to psychoacoustics.

i rarely listen to lennon's 'plastic ono band' anymore because it just exhausts me. sinatra's 'in the wee small hours' isn't quite as good as 'only the lonely', but its sparseness makes it infinitely more depressing. a fantastic record to listen to on headphones with the volume turned up, as you can hear every little intonation of his voice. when he goes soft on the last verse of "can't we be friends," it sounds like he has nothing left to feel anymore.

ben affleck was terrible in 'boiler room'. i mean, it was enjoyably terrible, but he still hammed the fuck out of it.

maybe so, but it remains that if you contain the suns at the 3, you're already more than halfway to beating them. if you're scoring more 3's than they are (which the spurs did, albeit by a narrow margin), you've basically made it a non-factor. i have yet to see the suns create an answer to that problem, and unless it gets solved they'll never be able to build a comfortable lead at any time in a game. i saw some moments when the suns would score quickly on almost every possession, but nothing that san antonio didn't manage well and keep up with. i only see a "surge" as a total shift in momentum where one team's scoring gets out of the other team's control, and i don't remember that happening at all. they never lead by more than six, and if memory serves me right, that was only momentary. normally i'd agree that you could write this off as a couple of bad calls, but if you get beat just a little bit by a team that beats you just a little bit every time, you haven't proven anything. the suns have yet to prove that they can beat the spurs, and citing a couple of bad calls isn't going to change that. nash was absolutely right at that press conference: they lost because they just didn't have the will that the spurs had. nash & d'antoni seem to know that they need to emerge as basically a different team in order to win. i'm really excited to see if they can pull that off tonight.

the suns got the uncontested layups because the spurs defended the 3. that makes the suns have to work about twice as hard to get the same amount of points, and it goes a long long way to keep them from getting their scoring surges. the spurs got the looks they more or less wanted (especially towards the end), and they made the suns work that much harder just to keep up. i'm sure popovich has no real problem with having steve nash get to the rim whenever he wants to if it means he's not dishing it out to somebody at the 3-point line.

my top 5 surviving top 5 lists in the history of this thread: 5. post 575: nostalgic favorites from associations with girls long forgotten edition: 1. sarah mclachlan - "fumbling towards ecstasy" 2. green day - "good riddance (time of your life)" 3. this mortal coil - "another day" 4. r.e.m. - "losing my religion" 5. death in vegas - "all that glitters" 4. post 592: two-shots version: 1. "golden slumbers"/"carry that weight" - beatles, 'abbey road' 2. "you gotta move"/"bitch" - stones, 'sticky fingers' 3. "obviously five believers"/"sad-eyed lady of the lowlands" - bob dylan, 'blonde on blonde' 4. "waiting for a superman"/"suddenly every thing has changed" - flaming lips, 'the soft bulletin' 5. "there there"/"i will" - radiohead, 'hail to the thief' 3. post 516: dan baird - "i love you period" restless heart - "when she cries" sunscreen - "love you more" tasmin archer - "sleeping satellite" richard marx - "take this heart" 2. post 415: special "overrated rolling stones tracks" edition: 1. goodbye ruby tuesday 2. you can't always get what you want 3. tumbling dice 4. sympathy for the devil 5. under my thumb 1. post 354: marvin gaye - "i want you" elvis costello - "i want you" bob dylan - "i want you" savage garden - "i want you" beatles - "i want you (she's so heavy)" good times.

spurs in 7 new jersey in 6 chicago in 6 i really hope phoenix proves me wrong, and i see them causing a lot of problems for the spurs, but i just don't see them winning a 7 game series.

please do, i've never gotten around to checking them out and it might give me a unique view into their signature sound.

i just found out that he also did "read 'em and weep", which is one of my 3 or 4 all-time favorite barry manilow songs. and when i heard it, i immediately thought "why isn't this a meat loaf song, it sounds exactly like him." and it became an ongoing joke between me and my girlfriend, the meat loaf song that happened to be sung by barry manilow. it all makes sense now.

album intermissions (skits don't count): 1. blur - "the debt collector", parklife 2. ween - "the HIV song", chocolate & cheese 3. tool - "intermission", aenima 4. tori amos - "mr. zebra", boys for pele 5. nine inch nails - "big man with a gun", the downward spiral five is sort of a borderline case, as you could sort of argue that it's a real song. i think it counts because it's only a minute & a half long, it's obviously a throwaway that doesn't quite fit the tone of the album, it's the only track that sort of has a sense of humor, and it serves a preparatory function for "a warm place."

we have an equivalent of "what are you listening to right now" in the movies folder, i think we can do with a "top 5" equivalent. if it catches on, we can get someone to pin it. 1. 'hoop dreams' (which i just saw for the first time today) 2. 'jules & jim' 3. 'grey gardens' 4. 'vertigo' 5. 'magnolia'